


what fate can't make of us

by lonelyghosts



Series: but in the end it's always you [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Compulsory Heterosexuality, F/F, June Egbert - Freeform, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Trans Female Character, WITH A TWIST!!, i might continue this! might not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25562425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: On Alternia, soulmates are sacred.
Relationships: Terezi Pyrope/Vriska Serket
Series: but in the end it's always you [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1568257
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	what fate can't make of us

On Alternia, soulmates are a sacred concept. 

No one knows where they began, how trolls discovered what the words that were printed on their grey skin meant. Much of troll literature has been lost to culling and schoolfeeding burnings led by the Condesce; it is known, at least, that the concept predates her. There are theories, entire fields of study dedicated to unraveling that mystery, largely through brutal and bloody experiments. Still, there's no real answer to the question of what it means to have someone's name on your skin.

The dominant theory is that it means you're destined to be with that person in some romantic capacity; what quadrant it means is up to each troll to divine for themselves. The names aren't color-coded by quadrant, after all, and most people have more than one name dancing across the canvas of their body. Some don't have any at all, but most of those trolls get culled early on. To be unmarked is a disgrace. 

Both Vriska Serket and Terezi Pyrope are marked. In that regard, they're lucky. They both have names dancing across their skin, scrawled in messy writing the color of their soulmate's hemocaste that they hide under coats and gloves and FLARP costumes. Sometimes they look down, individually, and run their fingers across the raised bumps that spell out names that are supposed to mean a bond that lasts forever. A bond marked and approved by fate, a bond written in the stars.

Here's the thing: neither of them are much for the concept of fate.

* * *

Terezi Pyrope has two names on the insides of her wrists and one along the curve of her hip. They taste of treasonous heretic red and too-dark purple that coats her mouth when she licks along the words and breathes in their scent. 

Karkat Vantas. Dave Strider. Gamzee Makara.

She knows Karkat, and she knows Gamzee. She thinks she understands what quadrants they're meant for, for her; she hates Gamzee, hates him with a fire that burns like the passion of all the legislacerators that have come before her. She supposes that means she's pitch for him, even if she avoids him as best she can instead of striving to improve him, the way Karkat's romcoms tell her she's supposed to yearn, if she's truly black for him.

She'll grow, she tells herself. Someday she'll be able to hate him properly, instead of with an anger that burns instead of rebuilds. She just has to wait.

And Karkat, who decorates her left hand in banned colors that she loves the taste of, well- how could she be anything but red for him? He's gruff and snappish and one of her best friends. Terezi loves to wheedle her way under his skin in a parody of the way he's branded hers, but the thought of seriously hurting him is not something she's ever entertained. He's her friend, and she cares about him. They flirt back and forth over Trollian and memos, and he makes her smile, sometimes.

That's enough, she thinks, to mean that the two of them are meant for red. Even if she doesn't want to kiss him. Even if she doesn't think Karkat could ever break her bloodpusher in half.

Dave Strider, though. She doesn't know anyone by that name. It's not even a name that's allowed- for a long time she wondered if it was misspelled and cut off, Davest Riderr instead of this eleven letter name that doesn't fit in the boxes of the forms every troll has to fill out. She's tried to look them up in the databases but there's no one by that name, not even under the banned and classified files that she has access to. 

Terezi tells herself that they must be a mutant, flying under the radar like Karkat. She's asked Karkat about the name before, wondering if he might know of some mutant underground where she might be able to find the person whose name drips in messy red letters across her wrist, whose very existence could get her culled if she's not careful. He didn't answer. Terezi thinks that maybe Karkat has their name too.

In the end she doesn't worry much about that mark except to cover it up; being soulmates with a mutant could get her culled, after all. There's no use wondering about who they might be. She might never meet them. Not everybody meets their soulmate- or soulmates. Terezi's already met two of hers. She's lucky, really. She's lucky. She has two soulmates and she is determined to grow to pity and hate them in equal measure. She's lucky, really.

And if she traces Vriska's name in cobalt blue Sharpie along her collarbone, breathing in blueberry that feels so right on her skin, it doesn't matter. If she curls close to Vriska in her recuperacoon at sleepovers, the spare she dragged out for the occasion discarded halfway across her room, it doesn't matter. If she wants to braid Vriska's hair and smoothe away her worry lines it doesn't matter. If she wants Vriska to get better, it doesn't matter. If she wants to save Vriska from her mother and the expectations that Spidermom leaves her and the world that she's supposed to find justice for, it doesn't matter. If she's wanted to kiss Vriska since she was four sweeps old, it doesn't matter.

If she wants, more than anything, to speak to Vriska just one more time, even with all the pain between them, even with her lost sight and Aradia's ghost and Vriska's missing eye and arm and Tavros's wheelchair clogging up the conversation, to make sense of the burning in her heart, it doesn't matter. Vriska's name isn't on her skin. Whatever she feels about Vriska, whatever love cuts its way through her like shards of glass at the thought of her, it will be worthless in the end. It will fade and die against the test of time.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

* * *

Vriska Serket has four names. 

It's rare to have more than three- frowned upon, really- but it happens. Vriska isn't Karkat, whose body is covered in the handwriting of others, but she's still an anomaly; someone to pity and be awed by at once. She doesn't show off the names that decorate her skin, but it only takes a few slips for people to gather that she has four names across her body. At least they are easy to hide.

Tavros Nitram runs down her spine in burnished bronze, along the line where wings would meet flesh if trolls still possessed those vestigial apendages, and that feels right. Accounts of Mindfang's life and of the rebellion she briefly infiltrated tell her of the Summoner, whose name lay between Mindfang's breasts at the exact spot where he put his lance through her body and ended her life.

(Vriska reads the passage of Mindfang's journal where she catalogues her soulmarks and her throat closes up, as she touches her own chest; yet another reminder of what she cannot have).

Tavros has to be her matesprit, she thinks. She's following in the footsteps of her ancestor, trying to fill shoes that are too small for her and too big all at once. She will be like Mindfang, she tells herself, and does her best to mold Tavros into the Summoner's descendant. He is so soft, and so kind right now, and she knows that he will get hurt. She has to make him better, and isn't that part of matespritship? She doesn't want to kiss him, true, but she supposes that will come when her work is done. When she's made Tavros into the kind of boy she can allow herself to pity. 

So it doesn't matter if she doesn't feel that way about him now. She will. 

Kanaya Maryam glimmers in jade along her ankle, the skin there smooth and unblemished by acne and scars. Vriska likes to trace each letter over and over again, her fingers soft against each curl of the cursive lettering she knows so well from Kanaya's handwriting.

She knows what quadrant Kanaya is meant for. Kanaya, the girl she wants to both be and be with. Kanaya who is the ideal of femininity, who started exactly where Vriska did and yet looks so different from her, unlike Vriska and her awful body. Kanaya, who is kind and smart and witty and everything that Vriska doesn't know how to be. Kanaya, who Vriska loves with an ache she hides from herself. Kanaya, who deserves better. 

Kanaya could not be anything but pale for her, could not possibly feel anything except the saddest of pities, pity that would not let Kanaya kiss her softly against the wall, her abnormally sharp teeth brushing with tender care against Vriska's lips, a hand curling over her hip. The only thing that Kanaya would ever see when she looked at her would be a broken thing to mend. And isn't that textbook pale? Isn't that all that Vriska could ever deserve, no matter what she feels?

Vriska tells herself someday the red aching she feels for Kanaya will soften and fade into pale. Someday, she'll learn to lower her expectations. 

Eridan Ampora curls around her bicep like a band, a violet circle on the gray skin of her upper arm. She knows Eridan, and there is no doubt in her mind about what his name along her skin means; how could she be anything but black for him? This boy's destiny is laid out in yellowed journal paper, written out in tales of a naval feud that ended in flames, and jade blood staining the polished ship wood, and a broken spade.

How can she not hate him? He reminds her too much of herself. Vriska ssees the way he looks longingly at her coat, strives desperately to conceal himself. She hates him and his empty, slimy flirtations, his jeweled hands on her waist. Eridan covers his whole body in scarves and coats and gold and Vriska wonders if he's hiding his body or the names written on it.

She doesn't know if hate is supposed to be like this- disgust and fear and anger at this mirror image of herself. It doesn't matter. Hate is the closest word, anyways, the one that conveys at least some of what her feelings towards him are. Even if she doesn't think she'll ever want to kiss him, even if the hate she feels toward him is nowhere near romantic.

The last of her names is the most curious, the one that makes absolutely no sense. June Egbert dances in bright blocky mutant red along the edge of her stomach. Vriska knows no one by that name- the name itself makes no fucking sense, missing letters and spaced wrong- a mystery that makes spikes her curiosity. Of course a mutant wouldn't be in any official databases, but she looks anyways. It's no surprise that she comes up empty handed. 

Still, she speculates about the mystery namee, the face of whoever it is that she will fall for. Vriska thinks they must be meant for her ash quadrant- Tavros is meant for red, Kanaya for pale, and Eridan for black, which leaves this final name as ashen. When she tries to picture the face behind the name, she sees a girl with messy, scrappy hair, a smile that shows off all her teeth, and a high, cackling laugh.

Vriska tries not to think about how when she pictures her empty blank slate soulmate, she ends up picturing Terezi.

It's stupid, really. Vriska should have known she was never going to be meant for Terezi. She's not a good person. She's nothing like what Terezi wants- just and righteous and good. Vriska is a doomsday device- all she spells is ruin and wreckage for anyone who bothers to get close. She and Terezi were doomed from the start. She was lucky to even be able to call Terezi her friend for a little while. She's lucky to even have a soulmate, let alone four. She's stupid and greedy and awful for wanting Terezi Pyrope, of all people, to be meant for her. Terezi deserves better than her, and the whole universe knows it. 

Vriska tells herself this every night. It never stops her heart from aching. 

**Author's Note:**

> i might continue this? havent been feeling very motivated to continue it as of late but who knows i might end up doing it!!


End file.
